Parents pull students from school over cell tower fears

Ten students have been pulled from charter school due to concerns about health risks from nearby tower

Pastor Larry Peltier of Beach Chapel in Encinita with a bell tower that has cellular antennas located inside. Some parents at the Innovation Centre Encinitas which Julian Charter School runs at the Curch are upset because there are more than a dozen cell phone towers located on the property

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Pastor Larry Peltier of Beach Chapel in Encinita with a bell tower that has cellular antennas located inside. Some parents at the Innovation Centre Encinitas which Julian Charter School runs at the Curch are upset because there are more than a dozen cell phone towers located on the property

ENCINITAS, Calif.  A group of parents have pulled their children from a charter school in Encinitas because of concerns about potential health threats from cellphone antennas near a classroom.

“My son was in the first grade,” said Nitya Rawal. “I pulled him out last week. From the research I’ve done, I don’t think it’s safe.”

Rawal’s son had attended the Innovation Centre Encinitas, which Julian Charter School runs in rented space at Encinitas Beach Chapel at 510 S. El Camino Real.

What she didn’t know when enrolling her son 18 months ago, she said, was that the tower at the church concealed 12 AT&T cellphone antennas. Another two T Mobile antennas are in the parking lot, hidden by a stealth design that makes them not immediately noticeable.

Julian Charter School Executive Director Jennifer Cauzza said families concerned about the antennas have pulled 10 students from the school, which has 125 students in grades K-6.

The school overall has 2,400 students in San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties.

Cauzza said this is the school’s second year at the church, and she is looking for another temporary location for the school, but it could be two years before it has a permanent site.

Pastor Larry Peltier at the church said he has had the AT&T antennas on the church for 15 years and has never had a complaint until recently.

Both Peltier and the parents, who have consulted with the San Diego County Center for Electrosmog Prevention on the issue, have hired investigators to take radiation readings at the site.

While both sides came away with similar data, their interpretations of what the numbers mean differ greatly.

Susan Brinchman, who formed the Center for Electrosmog Prevention in La Mesa in May 2011, said the readings are within the range of what is considered safe by the FCC, but other scientists disagree that those levels are safe.

A group of international scientists have, since 2007, periodically released the Bioinitiative Report, which calls for much lower levels of electromagnetic fields than set by the FCC.

The report, which is at odds with other scientific research, says the FCC guidelines address only heat damage that electromagnetic fields can cause at high levels over extended periods, but not other internal damage.

“Biological effects are occurring at thousands of times, and up to millions of times, lower than those limits,” Brinchman said about the FCC levels. “Those limits were never intended to protect against non-thermal biological effects. In other words, they don’t involve heating of tissue, but they do involve damaging DNA, genetic damage and interfering with the functioning of cells.”

Michael Schwaebe, a building biologist and mechanical engineer who worked for 28 years as a systems engineer at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, conducted the study at the school for the parents.

“With these meters and a dozen moms surrounding me, we walked through all the school and we took measures,” he said. “I found the magnetic and electric field meters were not a concern for classroom scenarios, but I found the radio frequency power density was really high.”

Schwaebe said the density was high because the antennas are within 20 feet of the classroom. Peltier disagreed and said the antennas are farther away.

Schwaebe said he recorded 2.0 microwatts per centimeter squared of radio frequency power density, well below the 1,000 microwatts-per-centimeter-squared level set by the FCC.

The 2012 edition of the Bioinitiative Report, however, states that biological effects were observed at 0.003 microwatts per centimeter squared, Schwaebe said. Those biological effects can include reduced cognitive abilities, depression, irritability, fatigue and insomnia.

Long-term effects include chronic aches and more serious inflammatory-type ailments.

“The FCC limits of 1,000 microwatts per centimeter squared is so you don’t cook yourself with a half-hour of exposure,” Schwaebe said. “There’s no consideration for long-term exposure of that radiation in this federal limit.”

Schwaebe said the Bioinitiative Report’s recommendation is to set 0.0003 microwatts per centimeter squared as a precautionary limit.

Peltier sees the level called for by Schwaebe as unrealistic, and said readings at the school showed levels that were 50 times below FCC requirements.

He also noted that the church hired Jerrold Bushberg, a renowned clinical professor of radiology from University of California Davis, to study the radiation levels at the church, while the parents hired “some guy off the Internet.”

“This guy is, in my opinion, a New Age scientist,” Peltier said. “It needed to be one million times below the FCC standards. I said, ‘That’s not a number I can comprehend.’”

Peltier said he has three grandchildren who attend the church’s preschool, which is run by his daughter.

“If I thought it was dangerous, I wouldn’t have my own grandchildren here,” he said.

Cauzza said that, as a charter school, the Innovation Centre is a school of choice for parents.

“If parents are not comfortable with their children at the site because of the cell towers, they are more than welcome to remove their children to put them in a school or campus that is ‘safer,’ as far as they are concerned,” she wrote in an email for this article.